Stuff not taught in seminary that might get you fired

The big three firing issues for pastors are, and I’m opining here sans data because it fits what I think: women, money, laziness. LifeWay has a series on the top five reasons but, trust me, they aren’t as deep in the SBC local church hinterlands as I am. Here are some things not taught on-high by seminary gurus and sages.

Your church has a cemetery and you are dumb enough to mess with it.

My first two churches were rural and had attached cemeteries. They had people to handle it and policies, mostly unwritten, about who can be buried there and at what price, etc. The Lord graciously helped me avoid the cemetery steamroller during my 15 years at those two churches. I, city boy, was dumb as a stump on the matters. Once I suggested a woman to serve on the cemetery committee and was looked at like I had three eyes. Another time during a building program I got mildly skewered because the new building wasn’t built with the convenience of toting the casket from the sanctuary to the cemetery in mind. Somehow the dearly departed managed to make it to the hole in the ground in spite of the flawed design issues. The less you have to do with the cemetery the better. If the funeral home messes up and buries Old Pete with his feet sticking out into the cemetery walkway, just say you had nothing to do with it. It can’t help you but only hurt you. Run screaming into the night when the subject comes up and you are asked for your opinion.

Your church has a cemetery and a cemetery fund and you touch it.

Toss in a pile of money in the mix of a cemetery and you’ve got serious potential for difficulty. One church had a cemetery fund that was quite large and was better managed than the church’s own money. Back in the days when you could get double digit interest rates the fund was exploding. I mentioned in a leadership meeting that maybe we didn’t need to tap members and others for additional donations. They looked at me like I had horns, a forked tongue, and a pointed tail. I let the matter drop. Besides, there are state laws on handling cemetery funds and if the church is on the hook for perpetual cemetery care remember that perpetual is a long time. Besides, if they get mad at you, people will shift their giving to the church over to the cemetery fund. My theory on that is that although it ain’t good, at least it keeps the money around the church.

Your church has employees who are members of the church.

I don’t care how carefully your church crafts policies for the church secretary, custodian and groundskeeper, if the individuals are members then the business has a high likelihood of not ending well. Most of the folks who held these jobs in my churches didn’t leave well and some of the blame fell on the beloved pastor. Sometimes folks left the church over it and that is always the pastor’s fault, right? Same for secretary. Same for custodian. If one of the jobs is passed along to relatives, sort of like rights of royal succession, good luck in getting out of that unharmed. Your goal is to ensure that you have nothing to do with all of this, nothing to do with the windows not being cleaned or the trash not being emptied or grass not being cut. Reach that goal and you’re golden. You just thought that the mighty pastor would be sequestered in his study plumbing the depths of God’s holy word. Actually, you may have to deal with another kind of plumbing from time-to-time.

And who says learning Hebrew is more important that these types of things?

There are many more but I don’t want to overload you. Suggest a few…

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About William Thornton

William Thornton is a lifelong Southern Baptist and semi-retired pastor who served churches in South Carolina and Georgia. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. You may find him occasionally on Twitter @wmgthornton.

How about a fund for new choir robes. Yep, there was 5000 dollars sitting there and the music committee came to me and said, “We’d like to use that money for something.” I brought it up at the next choir practice. Turns out the money was given infull by the mother of one of my bass singers. The discussion made him cry. The music committee then went to my Pastor and said it was all my idea. We never had another music committee meeting again, and those wonderful brand new robes we just had to have are mothballing right now.

Ooo, oooo, I’ve got another one. How about telling a charter member of the church that you need to hear his grandson sing before he can sing a special. His grandson was four and wanted to sing Jesus Loves Me. His grandson sang that morning sans audition.

September 17, 2018 11:30 am

Mark Terry

One of my seminary students served as pastor of a church with an attached cemetery. He told me he would never serve another church with its own cemetery. I served as pastor at a church that did have a cemetery attached, though no one had been buried there in 70 years. The previous pastor wanted to move the cemetery to build a multi-purpose building. Needless to say, the cemetery was not moved, but he was. He didn’t last long after floating that idea. Lots of seminary students tell me they are against church committees, and they plan to elminate them at their churches. I respond, “Hey, it’s good to have someone to blame other than you.” And, “Sharing the blame with a committee can difuse criticism.” I agree that it is better if the secretary and custodian are not members of the church. I’ve also advised my students to secure an ugly secretary if possible.

September 17, 2018 12:22 pm

Tom Bryant

When I first got to the church I retired from, there was a massive PULPIT. I mean it was huge and heavy. There was also a modesty wall for the choir, even though they wore robes. So if I stood behind the pulpit and took a half step back I was in danger of falling into the sopranos lap.
I asked about removing the wall or getting a new pulpit and was told in no uncertain terms that it was impossible. So I took a long term view. We started having the children come to the front to sing or to do a short skit. It meant that the kids were behind the pulpit. Soon people were saying that they couldn’t see their grandchild because of the pulpit. Then we started moving it. (It took 2 strong men to move) So then we didn’t move it back for me to preach. We scheduled thse children things for about a month and just left the pulpit down. Then we never put it back. About a year later, someone asked about the pulpit. I told them I didn’t know where it was but that was the last I heard of it.

The modesty wall was harder to get rid of… 🙁 And they still have the cemetery.

Cemeteries: William’s right, there’s a lot of legalities with cemeteries and funds related to them. Be careful, and if at all possible, move management, responsibility, and all of the funds to a separate non-profit or trust that will manage the cemetery. That’s the only form of messing with the cemetery you should consider. Make sure all the board members you suggest are long-term members of the church, preferably with loved ones buried in the cemetery. Point out how this will let them handle the cemetery without needing a church business meeting.

Otherwise: leave it alone. Make sure your church has appointed someone to watch over it and maintain it. Your grand idea to use the cemetery money for outreach will be meaningless if the town scuttlebutt is that you are desecrating grandma’s grave. And believe me: if the church has a cemetery and it isn’t well-maintained, that’s what many folks in the community think. “Grandma went to that church all her life, and they don’t care about her grave” will not be overcome with “we put in fancy new video screens at church so that you’ll want to come here.” Not if you desecrated Grandma, no they won’t.

A cemetery allows you to serve families at a point of need, so use it wisely as such. And contact an old, semi-retired preacher who is working part-time with a funeral home to find out how you can make that a point of service and ministry rather than a burden. Because eventually, every family, every person around your church will need a cemetery spot (or a niche for cremated remains, but still…) They’ll come to your church for funerals, which will take up time and energy, but if your church as a whole takes it as ministry, it can be good.

Some folks, it’ll just be trouble. But that’s true of blogs and pastor gatherings, too.

Good advice. In states where I served it would be illegal to use cemetery fund money for non-cem use.

September 17, 2018 1:49 pm

Blake Haas

Redacted own comment

September 17, 2018 4:44 pm

Greg Davidson

William,
This is great! You have to write to a book. Your wit and wisdom is something we all need more of in the day to day issues we face as pastors. I especially like your, “run screaming into the night” comment. I actually think that could be quite effective.

September 17, 2018 6:40 pm

Tarheel_Dave

LOL. Yeah, and the humble invocation of “beloved pastor” comment did not escape my attention. 🙂

September 17, 2018 7:12 pm

Tarheel_Dave

Do not forget the commandment of commandments outside of the actual ones and EVERYTHING involving the cemetery…

What is the commandment of commandments you ask?

“The pastor shalt not attempt to relocate, from the sanctuary, the Sunday School holy and revered head and bean counter”. Ummm, I mean, attendance and offering board. 😉

I didn’t do that in a church I served, but one time while leading a mission project in a church building we were using for lodging and worship the worship team leader rolled the flags up and put them in the back, mainly to prevent them from being knocked over or damaged. The pastor’s wife came unglued. The worship leader, a first year seminarian who was probably 25, made the mistake of pointing out to her that an American flag was a secular object that did not focus people’s attention on the presence of God. I let him handle that on his own, and helped him learn from the experience later on.

How about arbitrarily roping off the back four rows of pews because the front half of the church auditorium is virtually empty on Sunday morning, while people are clamoring for seats in the back? I did that once. We had a sanctuary that would seat 800 easily, and could be packed up to about 1,000, with a good Sunday morning attendance of 350. The front pews got very little wear and tear because the back was packed. So I found some ropes they’d used before and roped off the back four rows in each of the three sections. I was asked who gave me the authority to do so? And it lasted about three weeks before people just picked up the posts the ropes were tied to and moved them.

The sanctuary flooded during a hurricane. Afterward, the pews all had to be removed, dried out, and re-covered with new padding and material. When they were put back in, I asked the contractor to leave out four rows, and place the back row about ten feet further forward than it had been before, and leave a little more leg room between the rows. I put a table at the back where the ushers could put their plates and materials. No one said anything. I don’t know if they ever noticed.

September 17, 2018 10:30 pm

David Tuten

If any item has a brass plaque of any size on it, tread very carefully. Had a pulpit light mounted on the pulpit, with a little plaque “in memory of…” It was never used (had a light fixture directly over the pulpit at that time), and needed to go away for a sound system upgrade (pulpit microphone). I had a brave young deacon chairman at the time who took the bullets for me on that one.

September 17, 2018 10:51 pm

Jim Pemberton

It’s amazing how the rocks in the yard breed spiritual immaturity if not outright unregenerate church membership. It’s bad when the people planted in the back yard are more alive than the people in the pews.

September 18, 2018 12:30 pm

Matt M

What I learned post seminary is to find out if the church leaders are related to the lay leaders. In my case, the head elder was the father of the children’s minister, the previous music minister (my position), and the youth minister was the previous senior minister’s son. It was probably the most toxic leadership situation I ever witnessed (and the bar is high having been in the military and as a VA Chaplain). Furthermore, none of those ministries had witnessed growth in years because the leaders were demonstrably ineffective. It also didn’t sit well during my first fiscal year meeting that I learned the previous music person was paid 30% more than me even though I had literally 10 more years of experience and an M. Div. the church said they didn’t have the money to pay at that level despite having paid the head elders daughter the higher amount for 2 years. Now I know to look for nepotism and if I find a staff full of family members, to look elsewhere.